ON PAINTING. BY THOMAS CAMPBELL, ESQ. O, thou! by whose expressive art Possessing more than mortal power! From Love, the lord of Nature, sprung! But hush, thou pulse of pleasure dear; In Memory's sad and wakeful eye; Shall song its witching cadence roll; That breathed when soul was knit to soul, What visions rise to charm, to melt! The lost, the loved, the dead are near; Oh, hush that strain too deeply felt, And cease that solace too severe. But thou serenely silent art, By heaven and love both taught to lend A milder solace to the heart The sacred image of a friend; All is not lost if yet possest For me that sweet memorial shine, Or gazing through luxuriant tears, With life, and speech, and spirit warm; Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid A treasure to my soul has given, When Beauty's canonized shade Smiles through the sainted hues of heaven. No spectre form of pleasure fled, Thy softening, sweetening tints restore; For thou canst give us back the dead, Even in the loveliest garb she wore. Then blest be Nature's guardian muse, Whose hand her polished grace redeems; Whose tablet of a thousand hues The mirror of creation seems; From Love began thy high descent; And lovers charmed with gifts of thine, NIGHT. BY JAMES MONTGOMERY, ESQ. NIGHT is the time for rest; How sweet when labours close, To gather round an aching breast Stretch the tired limbs and lay the head Upon our own delightful bed! Night is the time for dreams; The gay romance of life, When truth that is and truth that seems Blend in fantastic strife; Ah! visions less beguiling far Than waking dreams by daylight are! Night is the time for toil; To plough the classic field, Night is the time to weep; To wet with unseen tears Those graves of memory, where sleep Hopes that were Angels in their birth, Night is the time to watch; On ocean's dark expanse; To hail the Peliades, or catch The full moon's earliest glance, That brings into the home-sick mind All we have loved and left behind. Night is the time for care; Brooding on hours mis-spent, Like Brutus midst his slumbering host Night is the time to muse; Then from the eye the soul Takes flight, and with expanding views, Beyond the starry pole; Descries, athwart the abyss of night, The dawn of uncreated light. Night is the time to pray; Our Saviour oft withdrew So will his follower do; Steal from the throng to haunts untrod, Night is the time for death; When all around is peace, Calmly to yield the weary breath, FROM THE ARABIC. THE morn that ushered thee to life, my child, E. E ODE, BY LORD BYRON. Он, shame to thee, Land of the Gaul! A mockery that never shall die; And proud o'er thy ruin, for ever be hurled Oh, where is thy spirit of yore, The spirit that breathed in thy dead, For where is the glory they left thee in trust ?— Go look through the kingdoms of earth, And something of goodness, of honour, and worth, But thou art alone in thy shame! The world cannot liken thee there; Abhorrence and vice have disfigured thy name Beyond the low reach of compare ; Stupendous in guilt, thou shalt lend us, through time, A proverb, a bye-word, for treachery and crime. While conquest illumined his sword, |